If a site gives a review which I consider to be both too low and a misrepresentation of the actual product I will not visit that review site.

While I believe the Order 1886 is a poor example because the game was a very mixed bag their are games that do get a shit kicking for no good reason.

Their have been a few reviews from Polygon that kind of both me being The Last of Us review a mature rated survival game was marked down for being violent and Bayonetta 2 a game with an over the top character who embraces her sexuality for being to sexualized. People wanted to know how well the games did what they set out to do and not marked down for what they are. A possible similar scenario would be marking a game down for using a turn based battle system despite doing it brilliantly.

Pretty sure this has been known for some time now.

I read that review.  It was perfectly fine and the score was not out of line with other scores.  People fixating on that one line was silly and trying to destroy her character over that was pathetic.  The whole thing made me embarrassed as a gamer and is a good example of what the author was talking about with the way some consumers disrespect writers for simply stating an opinion.  

On topic, "journalism" as a business will never, ever be perfectly clean.  As long as money is the main goal, it will continue to be the main influence on the product.  That's why sensationalism and "news personalities" have taken over cable news channels.  Writers are often mostly out of this loop but the further up you go, with editors and then ownership, the more they have revenue on their minds.

It's like when I used to work with a home improvement store.  Most employees want to give you advice that is accurate and fair.  Management, however, held meetings at the start and end of every day where they talked about nothing but sales and pushed "added value" to the customer--which is just a nice way of saying that they want you to sell the customer everything you can even if they don't need it.  It's that constant pressure that shapes content.

Honestly, though, who is really at fault?  Sensationalism works and it works well.  Why?  Because the consumer is practically begging for it.  Having good intentions is a good way to fail, while those putting money or notoriety above integrity thrive.  Evolution would say to go with the latter.

So we were all playing masterpieces and we didnt know that.
Idc anyway, I only read reviews without score from now on like the ones from Eurogamer.

I don't find website game reviews appealing because their criticism is summed up under the umbrella of the score.

Metacritic is not evil. It's just a collection of numbers by certified websites, but art and entertainment are too objective for the consumer to form his own opinion on how good a game is and how he might personally enjoy it based on numeral values.

Gaming journalism is moving away from game scores, and now you can find reviewers on places like YouTube that talk about their taste and are more sincere in judging games. I also find pseudo-reviews like Zero Punctuation and Super Bunnyhop just more informative.

It's also annoying when some argue that  "Gamespot" or "IGN" says this game is better than that game because of the score when two different people made a review based on their own experiences.

Reviewers post lower and higher scores for click bait. It happens to all games, so it's kind of a wash. Great games will still average out at higher scores than mediocre games which will still average out at higher scores than terrible games.

The sad thing is, if you wanna get an honest review you mpre or less HAVE to go to one of the bigger sites since the smaller ones might be dishonest about the score. And even the bigger sites might be forced to adjust the final score to please some publishers.

What we as gamers really should do is buying paper magazines instead. That way the magazine isn't dependent on ad revenue and can't be forced by publishers to give better scores to certain games.

But we're all too fucking lazy and CHEAP to do that, aren't we? We want everything for free and on our terms. WE have created this situation, no matter how indirect

Why is this under sony discussion?

Thing is, they raise scores to curry the favor of fans as well.

Completely agree with this article. And it makes perfect sense. Game reviews are free, so if you are getting a service that is paid for by ad revenue then what truly matters is attention and not quality.

I think this is mainly why this kinda nonsense didn't happen back in the 90s and 80s. Back then we all bought mags.